Sunday, 4 August 2019

A man armed with a rifle opened fire at a Walmart store in
El Paso, Texas, on Saturday, killing 20 people and wounding 26 others as
panicked shoppers and employees scurried for cover before the gunman
surrendered to police at the scene.

Many shoppers in the busy store were buying back-to-school
supplies when they found themselves caught up in the latest U.S. mass shooting,
which came just six days after a teenage gunman killed three people at a summer
food festival in Northern California.

Saturday's suspect was officially identified as a
21-year-old white male from Allen, Texas, a Dallas suburb some 650 miles (1,046
km) east of El Paso, which lies along the Rio Grande, across the U.S.-Mexico
border from Ciudad Juarez.

Citing law enforcement officials, multiple media reports
named the suspect as Patrick Crusius.

El Paso police chief Greg Allen said authorities were
examining a manifesto from the suspect indicating "there is a potential
nexus to a hate crime." Officials declined to elaborate and said the investigation
was continuing.

But a four-page statement posted on 8chan, an online
message board often used by extremists, and believed to have been authored by
the suspect, called the Walmart attack "a response to the Hispanic
invasion of Texas."

It also expressed for support for the gunman who killed 51
people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

CNN reported that the FBI has opened a domestic terror
investigation into the shooting.

El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, together with the neighboring
city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, form a metropolitan border area of some 2.5
million residents constituting one of the largest bilingual, bi-national
populations in the Western Hemisphere.

Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said three
Mexican nationals were among the dead, and six others were among the wounded.

The carnage ranked as the eighth-deadliest mass shooting in
modern U.S. history, after a 1984 shooting in San Ysidro, California, that
claimed 21 lives.

"We are going to aggressively prosecute it both as
capital murder but also as a hate crime, which is exactly what it appears to
be," Texas Governor Greg Abbott told reporters, adding, "I don't want
to get ahead of the evidence."

Details of how the shooting unfolded were not immediately
clear. But video from the scene broadcast by CNN showed victims lying on the
ground inside and outside the store.

The suspect surrendered to police as officers closed in on
him, and he was taken into custody without incident, according to authorities.
Video posted on social media appeared to show him being handcuffed by police
and placed in a squad car.

El Paso Mayor Dee Margo said police responded to the
shooting within six minutes.

Citing a law enforcement source, El Paso television station
KTSM published on its website what it said were two photos of the suspect taken
by security cameras as he entered the Walmart.

The images showed a young man wearing eyeglasses, khaki
trousers and a dark T-shirt, wielding an assault-style rifle. He appeared to be
wearing headphones or ear protection. Reuters could not immediately verify the
authenticity of the images.

On Twitter, U.S. President Donald Trump branded the
shooting "an act of cowardice," adding, "I know that I stand
with everyone in this Country to condemn today's hateful act. There are no
reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people."